Learn, guys
by SuperiorDimwit
Summary: Crowley had no real hope that his ideas would get through to Below. They were a hopelessly backwards bunch, with no sense of technology or finesse. Twenty two years later, he had long since forgotten he'd sent them that computer warranty, and the post-it note with "Learn, guys". Twenty two years later, Below delivers its response. And they still haven't learnt.


**A/N:** **I feel I'm in over my head with attempting anything in the vein of my heroes Pratchett and Gaiman, but certain events aligned in such a way that I felt I had to give it a go. So yeah, "based on true stories" applies here. I hope you enjoy it.**

I don't own anything pertaining to _Good Omens_, save a thumbed and dearly beloved copy full of post-it notes marking especially good passages.

* * *

It is a popular belief that nothing lasts forever, and that everything will some day end: human life, earth's existence, the universe, and eventually even that bottle of ketchup on the top shelf that contains enough preservatives to be used as embalming fluid. As a demon of quite respectable age, Crowley had seen enough of creation to know that "nothing lasts forever" held true for virtually everything.

An idiom of equally respectable age postulates that there are always exceptions: this being the misguided belief that most lotteries and game shows operate on, he wasn't sure if it was another ineffable law of physics laid down by Him, or if it was something one of his colleagues had sneaked into mankind's consciousness long ago. If the latter were true, he sort of wished it had been his idea. While this anecdote is quite pointedly unrelated to the current musings of a certain man behind stylish sunglasses, there was one thing Crowley had observed that was an exception, and did last forever: stupidity.

Stupidity should, as dictated by the laws of logic, have erased itself by means of evolution long ago, since individuals carrying the gene showed a tendency towards poking sabre-toothed tigers with sticks, balancing on too thin tree branches to pick _that _particular fruit, and riding bicycles in morning traffic while checking facebook updates on their smartphones. It _would _have erased itself, if not for the sad fact that stupidity, by virtue of its nature, negated all logic.

The clever observer might suggest to Crowley that stupidity would indeed come to an end, when humanity did. This would earn said observer a long, eerily unblinking gaze from Crowley: the kind of gaze that would, if the observer was clever enough, inform said observer that his point had just been proven. For when mankind expired, there would still be demons:* and demons, to his dismay, showed no signs of getting rid of stupidity either.

"I gave them a note and a manual", he informed the bright screen before him, without much hope for an answer. "And they still don't get it right."

His ridiculously overpriced and fashionably sleek computer may have the intelligence of a retarded ant, but it still did a better job than the guys at the department that drew up Immortal Souls agreements. He had sent them the computer's warranty, and the manual, and the post-it note, as an example of how warranties and instructions should be written.

Twenty two years later - which in all honesty wasn't that much for a demon, but equalled _centuries _in technology time - they had delivered an operating system.

Humanity may perish, but stupidity would live on.

* * *

It took Below twenty two years to develop the Windows 8 operating system. It took Crowley twenty two seconds to declare it the greatest invention Below had made since the Olympics.** The hacking skills he had acquired while modifying the blueprints for the M25 London orbital motorway had in that time led him past the confusing interface of the OS, and taken him into a chat room for tech support of the OS in question.

_Hi, this is tech support. I'm David. How can I help you?_

**Hi. I've installed Skype on my laptop, but i can't get the microphone to work**

_What's wrong with it?_

**I don't know. the computer just says "there is something wrong with your micropohne." It would be more helpful if it said what was wrong, or suggested how i fix it. I tried assigning the microphone in the audio settings in Options, but it didn't work.  
**

_Okay. First, open the Charms._

**What charms?**

_When you slide your finger over the touchpad from the right edge to the centre, you open the Charms bar._

**That thing i keep clickin up all the time when i don't want it? Why not just call it a menu bar? And why is it on the touchpad where you'll want to scroll?  
**

_Open the Charms._

There was a pause in the digital correspondence, of the kind that lets you fully appreciate the artistry of a tech support's subtlety in telling the customer to stop being an idiot. Crowley took the opportunity to take a delighted sip from a cup of steaming latte that had not been on his desk twenty two seconds ago.

**Opened it  
**

_Now click "Permissions". You will find the ON/OFF option for the microphone under "Webcam and microphone"._

**why is the onoff microphone is under Permission whent he restoff the audio settings areunder options?! that just doesn make sense!**

There is a fine line between education and brainwashing, and the special programme tech support went through involved jumping hopscotch back and forth over said line while being read aloud to from weekly celebrity gossip magazines. By the end of this tutoring programme, they had become sufficiently desensitized to all forms of idiocy, banality, and frustration from customers, even in the cases when the latter was probably justified.

Thinking the conversation abandoned, Crowley was about to disconnect from it when he became aware of a muted but unmistakably agitated voice coming from the speakers. He gestured to raise the volume, and leaned back for more of the performance.

**-know I'm not supposed to call, but I lost the chat completely! Yes, the text field is gone! There's no _Speech bubble_ option as in Windows 7, only _Hang up_, _Add contact to chat_ and _Mute microphone_. How do I- What? Double-click? On what? "Anywhere"? Just double-click in empty space? You can't be se-**

A warm feeling of accomplishment spread in Crowley's chest. He imagined it must be something similar to what fathers felt the first time they gazed upon  
their newborn offspring.

**...what the fuck, guys? Why not just put a fourth button there, like in all sensible Skype versions? It would be the _exact_ same result, only people might actually _understand_ what they're supposed to do: just put a button there, right _there_, next to the other three. But _no_, you're supposed to understand that you should _double-click_ in _empty space_ to open and close the text windo- ...No, only open, it seems. I can't close it the same way. What the fuck, guys? Who designed this bloody system?! Did his mom mix up the baby with the afterbirth when he was little?!  
**

It was a pleased Crowley that leaned forward, muted the rant, and grabbed a very stylish black pen - it could write under water, although he had never found an opportunity to try - with which he proceeded to write a memo to his economics manager: _Have Windows 8 purchased and installed on all the company's computers._

They were long overdue, but it was still nice that somebody Below had realised the vast gains from his M25 orbital motorway project. In fact, this somebody had been so impressed with the amounts of negative energy it generated that he had commissioned Crowley to develop the concept further: and so, he was currently in Scania, Sweden, occupying a custom made chair with comfort that made him wish he'd had _that_ when he slept through a whole century, in an office furnished with the pleasant atmosphere only granted by designer articles paid for by thousands of grumbling train and bus passengers. It required more finesse to corrupt an existing system, which explained why he had been given the job, really._***_ No demon knew finesse and humanity like Crowley.

Take it by degree, that was the key to success. Delegating the caring for the tracks to the road department, for starters: whenever trains were delayed because of problems with tracks, his Skånetrafiken company could not be held accountable, nor be made to pay out compensation.

The ticket fees were raised little by little, because, really, a few extra öres here and there wasn't something to grumble about, was it? Give it a few years of successive raises and it would be more luxurious to ride a train than a Ferrari cabriolet. The surplus from the tickets was used to fund the building of _one_ very expensive new station on an already existing stretch, which served as an excellent excuse for shutting down the handful of bus lines that served the marginalised villages - communities that lay far away from the new train station, and would slowly wither away and die without anybody noticing. Alternatively, they could always move into bigger towns and join the horde of damned souls that relied on Skånetrafiken for transport.

Maintaining a sufficient winter budget wasn't something Crowley deemed necessary, either, since Sweden never had any snowfall except every year. It came as an equally great shock every time.

There is a limit to how much humans will put up with without complaining, and that limit lay somewhere around 40 kronas to travel a 10 minute stretch. People _had_ started complaining, and Crowley had responded by replacing the customary delay compensation - one free ticket to make up for the trip missed - with a set amount of 50 kronas. Fifty kronas would buy you a very small, very sparsely covered pizza, yield just above half a cinema ticket, or let an adult passenger travel for approximately 10 minutes; that is to say, it was the kind of compensation that is delivered into your hand accompanied by a rich amount of spit from a company that thinks you should be grateful you get any service at all.

That would have been an unusually clever solution by Below standards, which was why Crowley was particularly pleased with _his_ solution. The true beauty of the move was that in order to receive the compensatory 50 kronas, the passenger had to fill in a complaint form, which was only available at the service centre in either Malmö or Lund. A trip to and from either of these stations would, for a majority of Skånetrafiken's passengers, cost at least twice as much as 50 kronas.

Complaints and compensation dropped to a minimum within weeks. Crowley had celebrated by buying himself a sleek, white, Swedish designer lamp ("Kotten") to go with his office's interior. It only cost 50 000 kronas.

Traffic companies, Crowley decided, were the ideal targets to capture. In no other way did you reach so many humans at once, who all depended on you for work, education and social life, and who could all be affected instantly through a single "damaged" train signal. Skånetrafiken was well on its way of becoming his pièce de résistance. Hundreds of stranded, delayed and fuming angry passengers delivered negative energy on a daily basis to the lay line nodes he had built the train stations on, steadily polluting the veins of Earth's power grid. It was a work of art, like the M25 London motorway - it might even rival Manchester, once he was done with it.

Crowley eyed the next step of his plan, outlined before him in that kind of small, insignificant newspaper notice (why pay newspapers loads of money to spread your news, when you could pay them pennies to keep news from getting noticed?) that slips from view like a ninja in rush hour, or a very small dog being flushed down the drains by heavy rain. Skånetrafiken had too few trains to meet the customer demand, the notice said, because so many of the aging trains had to be taken in for reparation every day. Crowley knew that, of course. He had also devised the cheapest, fastest solution for the problem: stop repairing the trains.

And his staff obeyed him.

Stupidity would live on. Forever.

* * *

* At least, that is what the corporate policy of the Infernal Authorities said. Demons were forever, as was Below, and they would stand undisputedly Victorious the day the Apocalypse actually did happen. Said policy also featured a bonus system with graphs for how effort would pay off in promotion, which looked very impressive, with lots of percentages and colour-coded bonus categories. Crowley had quietly vowed not to trust that too much, since that one time he'd turned the graph upside down and found it strangely reminiscent of the London skyline.

** The Olympics had started as a joke, really - or as what could have been a sophisticated psychological experiment, if Below had had any concept of sophistication. The whole idea came about when the Greek had gotten too smug about their achievements in philosophy and science, and in order to remind them how silly mankind really is, demons had taken the most banale, competitive elements out of children's games and made them Really Serious Adult Business through the ancient, failsafe manipulation known as "Na na na na na, I'm stronger than you!" or "Na na na na na, I can throw a plate farther than you can!" It had worked surprisingly well.

The true achievement of the Olympic Games was that, after the joke had died down and been forgotten, humans actually _revived_ it of their own accord. And made improvements that the meagre imagination of Below certainly couldn't be credited for. Now the Olympics had grown into a touring carneval that brought with it enormous financial costs to its host country, which entailed forced eviction of locals to make room for gigantic use-and-discard arenas, salaries redirected to fund the building of said arenas, a good beating for people who raised complaints about having no home and no salary, and a mass genocide of all undesired elements that didn't qualify as human, such as stray dogs, cats, raccoons, cows, and defected KGB agents.

*** Actually, Below merely wanted to get rid of him. Being sent to Scania is not a reward.

* * *

**A/N:**

**I bought a new laptop, with Windows 8 on it. Don't do that. **It took Below 22 years to develop it, and the result is an achievement of unmatched diabolical engineering. (I count from Adam's eleventh birthday, plausibly in 1990 at the publishing of _Good Omens_, to the release date of Windows 8).

**Skånetrafiken, the Southern Swedish railway company,** is probably not familiar to any of you. I would keep it that way, if I were you. Crowley runs it, there's just no other explanation. Even the "stop repairing the trains" part is true.


End file.
